Applied Social Sciences Dept

Faculty

Rhodes is associate professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies. She chairs the department of Applied Social Sciences and coordinates the Peacebuilding and Development undergraduate major. She teaches graduate and undergraduate peacebuilding courses including conflict analysis, peacebuilding theory and practice and the integration of these. She anchors the core MA in conflict transformation course, Foundations for Peacebuilding I.

She has taught and held various administrative positions at Eastern Mennonite University since 1988. She has led undergraduate cross cultural study seminars to Ireland and Northern Ireland, Russia, and South Korea. She has also served as Administrative Director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

Rhodes holds a Ph.D. from George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Her dissertation research compared conflict transformation and conflict resolution definitions and whether there are differences in practice between these two schools of thought. Additional research and teaching interests include evaluation and assessment in conflict transformation/resolution practice; integration of conceptual and practical knowledge in peacebuilding; peacebuilding pedagogy, and cross-cultural education.

Jane Wenger Clemens is originally from southeastern Pa. From 1992-1994 Jane taught full-time in EMU’s social work program while her husband completed graduate work at the University of VA. Jane returned to EMU in August 2000 when Jane’s family moved to Harrisonburg from Dayton, Ohio. Jane brings 30 years of social work experience to EMU’s social work department. Past experience includes social work in retirement communities in PA; Mennonite voluntary service on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Browning, Montana.; social work in a hospital and prenatal clinic, Philadelphia, PA; social work at a school for children with disabilities, Norristown, PA; and social work with adolescents, Dayton, OH. Jane earned a Bachelor of Arts in Social Services from Goshen (IN) College. and a Masters in Social Work from Marywood University, Scranton, PA. In addition to her teaching, Jane volunteers at Patchwork Pantry and Rockingham Memorial Hospital’s Hahn Cancer Center. January – June 2012, Jane lived and worked in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico volunteering with a small non-profit that partners with families living in a very poor neighborhood. She is involved with her church in Harrisonburg. Jane has been married forty years and is a proud parent and grandparent.

Deanna F. Durham, graduate of Northwest Nazarene College (undergrad) and Howard University (M.S.W.) began her teaching career at the University of Maryland in 1989 teaching part-time in the Department of Family Studies.

Deanna worked and lived in Washington, D.C. for 17 years from 1982 – 1997. She worked at a faith-based non-profit, Community of Hope, Inc., located in the 14th Street corridor which had burned down during the 1968 race riots. Over her 17 years in D.C. she directed a neighborhood after school educational enrichment and mentoring program for children and youth who were homeless, directed a social services program in three facilities for homeless and drug addicted families and in her final 3 years was the Deputy Director of the entire organization with a budget of more than 1.5 million. During these years she testified before Congress on behalf of families living in substandard housing, served on D.C. Commission of Social Services, Howard University’s School of Social Work Curriculum Committee and served on the boards of Parkmont School, Free the Children Trust, and Bright Beginnings Child Development Center.

Deanna and her family lived in El Salvador for over 4 years serving as the Country Directors for Mennonite Central Committee. Much of their work involved mental health and trauma work after the 12 year civil war. They also focused on sustainable agriculture, education and youth initiatives. They returned to Harrisonburg, VA after their MCC term in late 2001.

Deanna joined the EMU faculty in fall 2003 as the Director of Community Learning, a new initiative of the Lilly Grant: Theological Exploration of Vocation. Her primary focus for the first year was cultivating relationships with the local community with the goal of providing learning experiences for EMU students outside the classroom. Many of these contacts with local non-profits, churches, the local Islamic mosque, public and private institutions and with many of the refugees and immigrants who have recently arrived in the Shenandoah Valley continue to provide excellent “real life” examples and input for her current courses.

Carolyn Stauffer has taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels at 2 higher education institutions on the African continent and holds a Doctorate in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She has lived and worked in Africa (16 years), the Middle East (17 years) and has also engaged in various short-term assignments in North America, Europe and the Caribbean. As a veteran in cross-cultural settings, Stauffer is an agile educator whose pedagogy exemplifies the integration of both left and right brain educational approaches that pervade in our postmodern and global world.

Stauffer’s research interests include Intersectionality theory applications, social capital formation and enhancement strategies, and violence mitigation within intimate and domestic domains. Undergirding Stauffer’s academic pursuits has been a rich tapestry of work experiences in the human service and humanitarian aid arenas. While in the U.S., Stauffer worked in the mental health field in the Shenandoah Valley as well as researching urban demographics amongst marginalized center-city communities in Richmond, Virginia. During her decade and a half in Africa, Stauffer worked under the auspices of MCC, an international relief and development organization with development and emergency assistance training initiatives that took her from the southern-most tip of the continent (Cape Town) to the outlaying eastern parts of Uganda (Jinja).

During her time in South Africa, Stauffer worked as an organizational development consultant (with NGOs and blue chip companies undergoing dramatic post-Apartheid workplace diversity shifts), in the domestic and gender-based violence field (as a senior trauma counselor and public relations officer for a rape crisis support center), and as a community development specialist (and founding member of a Soweto-based HIV/AIDS Program servicing AIDS infected or affected communities living in the informal settlements surrounding Johannesburg). Stauffer weaves the depth and breadth of these many and varied experiences into her decade of teaching.

Carolyn is married to CJP professor Dr. Carl Stauffer, and together they have had the privilege of raising two university-age children. Carolyn is fluent in Hebrew, loves dance, music and art, and enjoys all things creative, imaginative and off the beaten track.